What is the value of time?

I would argue that there are two ways to answer this question.  One way to answer is to say that the value of time is the amount of money that you could be making at any given time.  Another way to answer is to say that time is invaluable because there is no way for us to get more of it.

We can try to measure the value of time in monetary terms.  When we do this, we have to think about the value of time in terms of its opportunity cost.  Let us say I have a job where I make $25 per hour.  The value of my time, at least during working hours, is then $25.  If I want to take an hour off work so I can watch my child play in some sports event, I am losing $25. 

In this view, time has different values at different times and for different people.  The time of a super-rich person is much more valuable than my time because they could potentially make hundreds or even thousands of dollars in an hour.  The time of a retired person might be completely without value because they do not do any paid work and therefore do not have to give up any potential income in order to spend an hour of time doing something.  Therefore, one way of valuing time is to say that its value depends on how much money we could make during that time.

A second way to talk about the value of time is to say that it is literally invaluable.  In other words, there is no way we can put a monetary or numerical value on time.  All human beings have a finite amount of time on Earth.  There is more or less nothing we can do to increase the amount of time that we are alive.  This means that there is no way for us to replace a single moment of our lives.  If we lose a given amount of time, we cannot pay any amount to get it back.  If we think of time in this manner, we can conclude that it is something like love -- valuable beyond all price.  It is something to which we cannot assign any monetary value.